PLAYING FOR THE FOREST: Former Violet Town resident Ella Hooper, along with friends Jo Jo Smith and Lisa Mitchell, will be playing a benefit concert to raise funds to fight logging in the Strathbogie Forest on June 9.

‘VOICES of the Forest’ is a community group dedicated to the preservation of the Strathbogie Forest.

For the last four years, the group say it has been campaigning for better protection for the natural asset, and lobbied politicians and government departments like DELWP to reconsider allowing logging in the region.

They argue that the logging, conducted by VicForests, is irreparably damaging the forest, and putting at serious risk threatened species like the Greater Glider and Powerful Owl.

“We’ve written hundreds of letters and probably thousands of emails and postcards to the government and Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning,” a spokesperson for the group said.

“We’ve taken local and state politicians on tours of the forest. We’ve made petitions, done citizen science, taken hundreds of people into this magical little forest and put it on the local and political map.”

But, they say, that method has had little impact on persuading government to intervene.